Internet Explorer 8 Officially Released

Microsoft will be making the much anticipated IE8 available at 12pm EDT, today, March 19th, 2009. Microsoft’s latest attempt to keep its market share in light of some stiff competition from Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera Browser, Apple’s Safari, and even Google’s Chrome Browser looks promising. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer claims,

“With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”

Google’s new version of Chrome is said to be up to 35% faster than the original released in September, Firefox is ramping up its Firefox 3.1 release, and Safari just got updated to version 4 beta, so IE8 is right in time for a browser battle royale!

Here’s a brief rundown of what to expect from IE8:

In addition to offering improved security and privacy protections, Internet Explorer 8 is one of the fastest browsers on the market today, beating other top browsers in page load time on almost 50 percent of the 25 top comScore Inc. Web sites.* It also helps people save time while using the Web with easy-to-use new features, including the following:

Accelerators. Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.

Visual search suggestions. The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.

Comments

Not working on windows 7 beta. This is madness! Again, Microsoft fails to please its utterly devoted public, the geek community.
No, actually I just read that a new beta supporting 7 is going to be released soon…it’s just that patience it’s not my best feature.

I don’t know if it is recommended to uninstall the beta of IE8 before installing the release version but instructions on uninstalling IE8 are at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700 and this seems to be intended for either the beta or a release version. I verified that this procedure works for uninstalling the beta.

I actually like IE8 better than Firefox 3.0. That said, unless/until I find a suitable replacement for some of my extensions (like AdBlock), I’m too heavily invested in FF to switch back exclusively. Of course, I just use both pretty flexibly depending on my need. :)

@Steppenwolf: MS will be providing the latest version of IE when the Win7 RC is released in a few weeks time. I expect they’ve got enough going on at the moment without having to build extra installers for a beta OS.

@GoodThings2Life: Although I don’t think an IE8-compatible version is out yet, IE7Pro brings most of the better Firefox addons to IE including an ad blocker. However, until this is available I don’t think I could see myself switching back to IE either.

I like IE8 also, but really would miss a few favorite Firefox extensions like Grab and Drag, FireGestures, and Foxmarks Bookmark synchronizer (although Foxmarks is planning to release a version that works with IE). So even though I have both browsers installed and make a conscious effort to use IE8, I find myself gravitating back to Firefox most of the time.